


The Naked Time

by greyamber



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Eleventh Doctor Era, Episode: s02e02 The Hounds of Baskerville, Episode: s02e03 The Reichenbach Fall, M/M, Pre-Slash, Star Trek: TOS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-28
Updated: 2012-05-28
Packaged: 2017-11-06 03:56:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/414431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greyamber/pseuds/greyamber
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock: …body’s betraying me. Interesting, yes? Emotions.<br/>John: Yeah. All right. Spock. Just…<br/>- The Hounds of Baskerville</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Naked Time

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing. They have me, though, if they will.
> 
> Warning: Not beta-ed, and sorry for the chaos of tenses. I just want to show the moment John standing in front of the tombstone and choosing his word.

John Hamish Watson was a hopeless Science Fiction fan, not that he could help. He had grown up with the Doctor, after all. Thank you very much.

It was hard to say how much the love to Doctor Who had changed his life. But to think it back, John had to admit that it was the very beginning of his great-protector-dream.

 

It didn’t make him an automatic Star Trek fan, though. He only knew it because of a girlfriend from continent America, who dragged him through the whole three seasons of TOS. Penny was head over feet for Spock. And John loved the show, too, enough to keep watching it after their ugly break-up. And as TNG aired in the UK, he boarded the Starship Enterprise and tagged along. The habit was only interrupted after he the joined RAMC and was shipped out, then the habit was picked up again, after he moved into 221B.

 

It lasted three months until he finally brought himself to try the renewed Doctor Who, though, and skipped through it while grumbling under his breath. Wrong colour. He shouted. Sherlock threw him a blank look over the microscope. Why are you keep torturing yourself by a show you can’t even enjoy, is a case to me John.

Delete it then. It’s sentiment. John grumbled, to Sherlock, then back to shout at his telly.

 

It didn’t get better, not until the Eleventh Doctor’s Day One began, until he watched breathlessly while faces of the former Doctors flashing over, one by one, eight of his Doctors, and the new guys. They all have the same eyes.

John let go a shaky breath, finally decided to give the show a chance which it apparently deserved. And it felt really good to have his great protector of childhood back.

(It still couldn’t make him blend in the other fans, though. They are too young, too noisy. And he was too cold. They made him miss the heat of Afghanistan.)

 

With Star Trek, it was another story, totally completely. Partly because of Penny, he established his admiration to Spock at the first sight, which only grew as the Vulcan finally accepted both sides of him and merged them perfectly for his position in the adventure: Vulcan’s ability and a human heart. John remembered watch sorrowfully as one by one the Vulcan’s friends passed away. He remembered that his heart ached as the Vulcan lived alone in a strange world, still had his long journey to go missions to fulfil. But as he began the newest film, his heart turned cold.

Wrong faces. Wrong plots. Wrong universe. All of those because they have to mess up with the bloody timeline. His brain screamed. Is our timeline doomed because we are too old to become their potential market?

His face grew grave.

Sherlock must have noticed it. Because the consulting detective hadn’t brought any body parts home – human or not – at least a week.

As the planet Vulcan was gone. John pressed his mouth into a determined indifferent line. So what. He retorted silently, my universe’s gone.

…and Spock had to live in the wrong timeline forever.

…better watch some Bond after this. John thought, or Die Hard.

 

It didn’t stop his affection to the former shows, though, even Sherlock was pretended to be forced to settle in the sofa and to watch with him. And oh Lord he’d love to compare his friend with Spock, in bad jokes.

“I can’t see why we look alike to you, John.” Sherlock frowned, “because I, on the contrary, don’t think there’s a flaw in Vulcan’s logic to discipline their emotions which are wild and disturbing. If people in real life could learn their way to control their mind, over 90% crimes in Britain won’t even happen. Besides, John, my way to observe and deduce is _science_ , not telepath.”

The consulting detective ended the sentence with a slightly offended tone. John smirked and waved him away. Emotion’s useless and dangerous. Sherlock mumbled every time. Yet he followed John to watch the show every time.

 

Not only Spock. John loved to compare his childish friend to a lot of others. Android Data, Pinocchio, even the Tin Man, but he stuck to Spock at last. Maybe because the other three all yearned to become a real boy, the Vulcan denied his emotions and human part at first, quite fiercely; maybe because the Vulcan changed thereafter because you couldn’t lead a Starship without a heart, because you couldn’t go further without to recognize what you are. And John remembered what Lestrade said as first time they met. His brilliant friend had the potential to become more. So much more.

…or it was just because the strength beneath those lean muscled bodies, the razor sharp mind.

Or it was just because he adored them both. Badly.

Near the hearth of Cross Keys Inn, John watched carefully as his friend welled up, as if watching his own version of The Naked Time. His heart felt that it was stabbed as Sherlock hissed out his I-don’t-have-friends. He stormed out while counting. By the time he stood out of the door, in the cold night’s air, John had forgiven his friend already.

Because Sherlock did care. No matter what he said. Let alone to say when he was scared by his own.

 

\-------------------o0oo0oo0o-----------------------

 

What John didn’t think before, was the way his friend died. Or maybe he did. Because there  was the line the last time he said to Sherlock face to face, “you machine”. Turned out that his boy- not- real was more like the android Data, after all. He didn’t out live everyone after the universe was gone. He cared, far too much. He died because of it and left everyone else -- the one who _really_ knew him -- tearful and hollow.

 

John opened the page of his blog. Only to find out that Sherlock was right. John wrote about _him_. And somehow the mad man became the core the vey heart of his blog, as well as his life.

His universe was surely gone.

One day John would have to clear his friend’s name. Not now.

Now, he deleted all the messages, posted his last entry. The most difficult line ever.

_He was my best friend._

His hand trembled at the tense. His heart too numb to do it.

_And I’ll always believe in him._

…

But what message he could leave to Sherlock?

 

\-------------------o0oo0oo0o-----------------------

 

Now he’s here, feeling like a soldier under the gaze of his major, standing attention in rigid gesture. His lips dry. His fists tight. His throat tighter than his fists.

 _Absent friend_. They said. Captains of Enterprises. Twice. John can’t. As if by doing it he will have to let Sherlock go. From _here_ , too.

Chillness seizes his chest. And John remembers the tremble in Sherlock’s voice. His last note.

At last, he sticks to the word “the most human being”, even if his friend has never expressed such a wish. At last, he can’t stop himself to breathe out the last beg.

Maybe this is how it feels, to be deserted from your own world. He wonders.

…then the soldier takes the charge, John schools himself, turns around to face the bleak now is his world, and walks away.

 

End…For now

**Author's Note:**

> I hesitated as wrote down the last line. Because none of my stories have ended in a sad way like this. I’m going to fix it after the third series. Promise.


End file.
